a. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for preparing soil conditioners having a superb efficiency from peat-moss. To be more precise, it relates to a method for preparing soil conditioners having excellent properties, which comprises the steps of adding alkaline earth metal salts to a solution of alkaline extract of an peat-moss, an alkaline of various humic acids separated from said extract solution or a mixture of these alkaline solutions thereby to form flocs, further adding an organic coagulant to the thus flocculated solution thereby to coagulate said flocs coarsely, and subsequently collecting and drying the resulting condensate. As soil conditioners, there are known varieties of commercial articles sold at high prices, but few of them have high efficiency in proportion to their prices. The present invention is intended to provide a low-priced soil conditioner having superb efficiency by utilizing peat-moss.
B. Description of the Prior Art
There is a well-known method for the preparation of a soil conditioner from peat-moss as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,321,296 as well as Canadian Pat. No. 813822. This known method is so devised that the peat-moss is either made to react with calcium hydroxide or magnesium hydroxide at an elevated pressure as well as temperature or made to react with calcium hydroxide or magnesium hydroxide at an elevated temperature in the presence of sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide to act as a catalyst thereby to produce a paste-like mixture, and the resulting product is dried and crushed to serve as the soil conditioner.
The soil conditioner prepared by this known method is indeed significant in that peat-moss existing on the earth in great quantities has been utilized as the starting material for preparing a valuable soil conditioner, and the product soil conditioner admittedly has a fairly superior efficiency. However, the present inventors have found the fact that this soil conditioner still has some defects. The first defect is that the effect of soil conditioning by the use of this soil conditioner considerably varies with the kinds of plants to be grown. The second defect is that it is required to apply a fairly large quantity of the soil conditioner for the purpose of effective soil conditioning. And, the third defect is that it is required to apply an elevated temperature and pressure at the time of preparing the soil conditioner and the drying process is lengthy and requires heats.